Spain

LOS LLANOS DE ARIDANE, Spain, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Families rushed to retrieve belongings from their homes and escape the advancing lava on Tuesday, as sirens sounded and helicopters flew overhead in air filled with smoke from an erupting volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma.

Drone footage showed the lava flowing westwards to the coast in three huge tongues, incinerating everything in their path, including a school.

LOS LLANOS DE ARIDANE, Spain (AP) — Lava continued to flow slowly from a volcano that erupted in Spain’s Canary Islands off northwest Africa, but the head of the regional government said Monday he expects no injuries to people in the area after about 5,000 were evacuated.

Lava was flowing on the island of La Palma toward the sea, moving at 700 meters (2,300 feet) per hour, according to the Canary Islands Volcanology Institute.

LA PALMA, Spain, Sept 19 (Reuters) - A volcano erupted on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma on Sunday, sending fountains of lava and a plume of smoke and ash into the air from the Cumbre Vieja national park in the south of the island.

Authorities had already begun evacuating the infirm and some farm animals from the surrounding villages before the eruption, which took place on a wooded slope in the Cabeza de Vaca area at 3:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), according to the islands' government.

MADRID (AP) — Authorities in southern Spain say that rain has helped to bring under control a major wildfire that ravaged 7,800 hectares (19,200 acres) of land despite more than five days of intense firefighting work by land and air.

Juan Manuel Moreno, the president of the Andalusia region, said in a tweet early on Tuesday that “the rain that has been falling for some hours has been the best ally of the intense and admirable work of the crews.”

MADRID, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Spain will create specialised groups within the Interior Ministry and the police force to prevent hate crimes and support victims, the government said on Friday, amid mounting public pressure to curb an increase in such attacks.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez chaired an urgent meeting of ministers, community leaders and police to discuss how to reduce hate crimes, which have been growing by around 9% a year since 2014, according to the Interior Ministry.

MADRID (AP) — Wildfires suspected to be arson have burned nearly 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of forest in northwestern Spain over two days, although rainfall was expected to give a respite to firefighting teams.

Two active blazes continued to be out of control Tuesday in a rugged mountainous area of Galicia, the region’s authorities said. The flames have come close to populated areas and forced the closure of roads.

PENISCOLA, Spain, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Firefighters in the Spanish coastal town of Peniscola found the body of a teenager early on Thursday in the wreckage of a collapsed building and said they were still searching for another missing person.

Peniscola's mayor Andres Martinez told Reuters the boy was around 15 years old and had been staying in the three-story building, which collapsed for unknown reasons on Wednesday evening in the region of Valencia on Spain's eastern coast.

22 Aug 2021; MEMO: US President Joe Biden and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez agreed two military bases in southern Spain can be used to receive Afghans who have worked for the US government, the Spanish government said on Sunday, reports Reuters.

In a 25-minute telephone conversation on Saturday night, Biden and Sanchez agreed Moron de la Frontera near Seville and Rota near Cadiz can be used for refugees from Afghanistan until their travel to other countries is arranged.

MADRID, Aug 20 (NNN-Xinhua) — An unidentified person from southern Spain has been admitted to hospital with a brain disease caused by the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, said local health authorities.

The person, from the small town of Coria del Rio close to Seville, capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia, was diagnosed with meningoencephalitis.

It is the first case of the mosquito-borne virus that has been detected in the region in 2021, after seven people lost their lives in an outbreak in the provinces of Seville and Cadiz in 2020.

MADRID, Aug 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Fires in Spain’s central Avila province forced hundreds of people to flee their homes on Sunday, as parts of the country sweltered under crushing temperatures.

The fire, which has been burning in the city Navalcruz since Saturday morning, has been fed by winds of up to 70km an hour across the Iberian peninsula.

It now has a perimeter of more than 40km and may already have burned more than 5,000 hectares, said Jose Angel Arranz, forestry director of the Castilla y Leon region.